Mobile app stores are stuffed with messaging apps from WhatsApp to Tango and their many imitators. But FireChat, released last week for the iPhone, stands out. It’s the only one that can be used without cell-phone reception.

FireChat makes use of a feature Apple introduced in the latest version of its iOS mobile software, iOS7, called multipeer connectivity. This feature allows phones to connect to one another directly using Bluetooth or Wi-Fi as an alternative to the Internet. If you’re using FireChat, its “nearby” chat room lets you exchange messages with other users within 100 feet without sending data via your cellular provider.

SkinneePix

iOS app makes selfies look skinnier!

Wish you looked thinner in your selfies? Well, as always, there's an app for that.

A new iPhone app called SkinneePix bills itself as an easy way to edit your selfies to look as much as 15 pounds skinnier.

Following two years of rumors, Microsoft finally launched its Office suite of apps on the iPad today. And despite how frustrating it was to wait, it looks like iPad users aren’t bothered at all. The freemium app is now ranked number one in Apple’s App Store among free iPad apps — less than 12 hours after it launched.

A new study into the relationship of social media and television finds that social media is an increasingly important component of TV viewing, with about one in six viewers using social media during primetime and that half of that social media usage was related to TV, according to a new study from the Council for Research Excellence (CRE).

No one can attest to that quite like Disney, which is betting big on viral stars not just to draw view but to build its next-generation franchises that it can promote on cable channels, theme parks, and more. The Walt Disney Co. is acquiring Maker Studios, one of YouTube’s largest video production networks for $500 million,Reuters reported on Monday. (That number could increase to as much as $950 million if Maker hits designated performance milestones.)

Ads on mobile apps generate more than $8 billion in annual revenue for app developers. With so much money at stake, various ways to game the system have arisen. One fraudulent method is to write malicious code to generate false clicks (see “A Web Scam That Makes $500,000 a Month”). A more insidious approach is to simply make it easy for users to hit ads through “placement fraud.” Developers can make ads too small to stand out, too close to a game button, or even invisible.

Now researchers at Microsoft and the University of Southern California have come up with what they say is the first publicly disclosed technology for detecting and countering placement fraud at a large scale. They’ve built what they call a digital “monkey” to hop between millions of app screens to see whether designs violate an app store’s terms of use.

When the technology was deployed on 50,000 Windows Phone apps, it uncovered more than 1,000 that had ad placements that violated the terms of use; of 1,200 Windows 8 tablet apps, it found more than 50 with problems. The work, done in April 2013, is the subject of a paper being aired next week at theUsenix conference in Seattle.

With millions of apps for sale, it’s infeasible for humans to do a visual inspection. That’s one reason why most research attention has been focused on the problem of click fraud, in which automated programs called bots click ads.

For months, reports have said Amazon has been developing a device that will compete with Apple TV, Google Chromecast and Roku. Those devices plug into users' TVs to stream video from online sources such as Netflix, YouTube and HBO GO.

The Amazon device is expected to be a small dongle similar to Chromecast and the new Roku Streaming Stick.

The Seattle-based company's streaming device is expected to run on a modified version of Android, similar to Amazon's Kindle Fire tablets. Some reports have also said that the device may place an emphasis on video gaming.

While these percentages, compared to each social network's overall user base, are impressive, they're still small portions of the U.S. adult population. Still, as digital and social media evolves, we can expect social news consumption to advance alongside it.

The following chart, created by Statista, breaks down how social media users are using their platforms to get news.